If you go do a Kickstarter or whatever permutation of crowd sourcing, learn from others mistakes.
Their Kickstarter video was poorly done and uninspiring. Their page and rewards lacked appeal to a mass audience - particularly the low dollar contributions which are most campaign's bread and butter. Good luck bro, hope to see it fly.
Yes! Definitely. I'd like to spend a solid week and create a killer ass video for it, I have atleast a few cool clips i might be able to incorporate
Now that the rocket is in for review, the next step is to set up said funding avenue, so ill be able to devote my focus exclusively to that without feeling like Im procrastinating on the design elements. Thanks man! I do too!
Sourcing funding for sure. Most people tend to neglect the political aspect and only focus on the technical parts as they are more fun. But the work split it at least 50\50 between political and technical for any major advanced project. Corporations even still make this mistake.
It is not often that the best technical solution is what wins contracts it is who did the best at marketing their proposal.
Yes, excellent point! I plan to go all out with it, sharing my project everywhere possible. Sending it to companies asking for sponsorships. Sending it to Universities asking for potential sponsorships or how theyd like to start/build on an aerospace program together, etc.
I may have a family friend of mine who is news anchor do a short on it for me, if he can... I plan to ATTACK the advertisement and really play it up. Youre exactly right, marketing is almost equally crucial to design in this project's case.
Dudes... Here's my two cents...
Set up a Kickstarter. If you get funded, cool. If not, no one loses money because no money changes hands unless you're fully funded. I'd pitch in a few bucks... But I also think your chances of getting fully funded via Kickstarter are close to zero because, as others have pointed out, most people won't give much to someone unless they're getting something in return. Donating to good causes are one thing. Donating to a young man's dream hobby is kind of catchy, but $15,000 worth? Maybe not... But if you set it up, I'll pitch in $20, risk free. ;-) just check into it first... I'm not sure Kickstarter allows a funding campaign that doesn't result in some material product for those who pledge.
As for all the naysayers... They're just jealous that crowd funding wasn't a thing when they were young and still had dreams... Go for it. What's the worst that could happen? You don't get funded? You're already there, so risk to you is zero. Possible upside is you do get funded... Wouldn't that be awesome?
YES. This is pretty much my exact mentality. I have the dream and the knowledge base, and the will. But if it doesnt happen Im not gonna run crying home. It's a wonderful educational opportunity I am happy to create for myself, and student aerospace teams worldwide if everything plays out the way Ive got in mind. But I honestly EXPECT it to not work out.
never expect the best. Always strive and hope for the best, but expect the worst. That way youll never be disappointed, or mediocre.
oh and Dixon, what hype? you mean progression of technology and social evolution? We’re never going backwards yo!
I'd recommend something along the lines of the world record Saturn V built and flown by Steve Eves. Break your project into the various bits required to make it happen and size our contributions based on the purchase price of those items. After the launch, you provide that item to the person that paid for it. If they donate the N5800 or M2245 and case(s), they get the respective case back. If they buy the Telemega, they get the unit that has flown to 200,000'. I'd expect you'd be fully responsible for the airframe, while others can contribute the guts and brains. I'd also expect you to provide some sort of commemorative "token" of sorts for helping you out.
Steve made it happen through a network of friends and acquaintances over years of befriending rocketeers. He had a lot of press and heavily promoted and thanked those who contributed. He also had the benefit of being very close with the manufacturer of his motors, which I am sure helped his cause. He then donated the rocket to a museum for future learning and promotion of the hobby. Catch my drift?
https://www.libertylaunchsystems.com/saturn-v-project/
https://www.libertylaunchsystems.com/saturn-v-project/Motors/
https://www.libertylaunchsystems.com/saturn-v-project/Sponsorship.shtml
THIS THIS THIS! Yes, thats a great idea actually!! Other than machining, I could remove MOST of the big ticket items off my budget that way and bring the total crowd funding requirement down to 5 grand or less.
Accountability scares me a tad… “Oh , I forgot to bring the forward closure! And no one has one here!”
Also we are going to be using a heavily modified FC for the M2245..But yeah, other than that, youre spot on!
I think what I might do now - When I finalize (fully update) the budgeting sheet during this week and get my funding avenue set up, ill start soliciting for components. Perhaps on this same thread. If youre reading this now and know youd like to let me borrow something, go ahead and speak up now!
Just be ware people- this wont be the “normal” borrow agreement. I cant insure thousands of dollars in component replacements. But I am pretty confident the vehicle will perform as intended and the GPS and RF will bring her home.
For crowd funding to work you need to have had a pretty serious amount publicity. Several orders of magnitude more than what you have gotten by posting here. Especially here since we tend to be a bunch who spend more than we should on rocketry already. The only reason I would do a crowd funding campaign for my project would be to use it to get a bit of exposure, and generate some more focused interest. Since people who have personally invested in your project tend to be more interested in what is going on. However this can backfire if your campaign flops badly, it makes for a pretty strong negative signal about the feasibility of your project, or the scope that you have set for it. It also doesn't go away, so from then on you will have a black mark that will follow your project for anyone who googles it.
Indeed, I have the facebook set up for now but as I mentioned earlier in this post I do intend to drastically increase the reach of the project's solicitation now that it is in developed and ready to build form. The reason I had kept it somewhat low key for so long was that I wanted to make sure it would actually be feasible in it's current form before I rushed out and showed the world a beautifully empty shell of a project.
Also if I was you I would seriously look at the bit of additional expense to get an unlocked GPS. It is about $1000 additional cost over the price of the unit and some paperwork. But it would make it so you can have GPS data for your whole flight. GPS does not actually have any limitations on speed or altitude, and work just fine for an orbital rocket.
Can you tell me more about this? Im not much of an electronics geek, and I have had something like a day of cumulative conversational minutes with my GPS designer on this subject... In less words, he really got it into my head that operating on military P codes would not only be a hassle in paperwork and perhaps cost, but could require physical re-designs of the board that he was plain uninterested in pursuing. In his words, it will never loose the connection, it just wont resolve accurately.
No, Im not changing GPS boards. Unless you know of a 1Watt 900mhz system that fits in a smaller area than the GPS-1 and uses a smaller power source for under $2000
We're just going to have to deal with scrambled eggs bro. I know its not ideal. I know its potentially even dangerous. But for the sake of the project, i think it is undoubtedly the best approach. And with a thoughtful head and watchful eye, you can still gain plenty of useful information about whats happening in flight even with scrambled data. Sortof like a Kalman filter.
ALRIGHT LADIES AND GENTS! The class III board of reviewal request HAS BEEN OFFICIALLY SUBMITTED!
I eagerly await them to dissect it and flood me with questions and ideas, and ill try to pass them along here as fit and appropriate as well. Lets see how this goes!
Also, are you ready to see the first REAL parts for the rocket other than the brass T I have?
My 3D printing specialist has begun printing some of the PROTOTYPE avbay components. He is going to ship them to me and I am going to do some refinement to them in preparation for the real deal.
here you can see that the avbay floor retains the cutout I had in the CAD model for visualization purposes. (We choose to leave it that way for fun, and it may provide some cool visualization IRL as well)
Thank you all once again for your thoughts and participation on this thread. This is such a cool experience on my end, even if this project never sees the light of day.. But we shall see together, eh?
I know exactly how it feels to have your heart beating out of your chest wanting to build a bad ass project at a young age, believe me, I get it. This negativity you are receiving is part of the "all about me" generation requesting donations from a lot of folks in the hobby more developed in years than you that currently that have jobs/careers, mortgages, car payments, families to feed, house repairs, 401K's, healthcare costs, etc. I am only speaking for myself here, but asking other hobbyists to provide funding for your hobby is highly inappropriate.
